


too far gone

by theriveroflight



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Akumatized Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Black Cat Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Lady Noire, Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, Fighting, Ladybug Adrien Agreste | Mister Bug, M/M, Rabbit Alix Kubdel | Bunnyx, Time Travel, why does mister bug have a tag but lady noire doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29888025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight
Summary: Adrien sits in his room on his fifth name day, with a gift sitting neglected on his desk.And then the portal opens.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Alix Kubdel, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Tikki, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21
Collections: Adrichat February 2021 Exchange





	too far gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherrybomb_marichat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrybomb_marichat/gifts).



> um yeah. chat blanc and adrien angst. yeah
> 
> hope you enjoy? three angsty ML fics in a row yeaaaaaaaah I promise I'm working on fluff! though fluff is hard for me
> 
> this was written for the adrichat fic exchange
> 
> prompt: Adrien meets Chat Blanc, and see how sad and lonely he is. He comforts him, therefore making him devilized (is there a word for this?). They have a heart to heart making Chat feel much better
> 
> hopefully I didn't diverge from this in a way that you wouldn't enjoy; I tried to avoid being overly depressing

“Adrien,” Bunnyx asks, “I need you to come with me.”

He’s sitting at home having gotten a gift, from Ladybug (or, Lady Noire right now? They’re swapped for a bit, extra training). He won a fencing tournament earlier in the day. He should be at the top of the world right now. But he’s not.

He isn’t, and he doesn’t know why.

He may as well go with her. “What’s…wrong?”

“You aren’t as risky to bring for this, because you know your own identity…” Bunnyx mutters to herself. “You and Ladybug temporarily switched, yes?”

“...Yes.”

“Come with me.” He follows her into the Burrow. “Close your eyes. Trust that I will guide you.”

And somehow, he does trust her. So he takes her hand, and closes his eyes, stepping alongside with her.

“Open your eyes.” He does, and he’s in a world that has been bleached in icy blue.

“What is this place?” he asks. He spots a flash of moving white.

“I trust you to defeat him and restore the timeline, Adrien.” Bunnix turns back to her Burrow. “In the meantime, I'm going to find out what caused this?”

He takes a deep breath. He feels the wrinkle in time when the Burrow disappears, and the soft presence of Tikki.

“What do I do?” he asks, mostly to the kwami.

“You need to transform, Adrien,” Tikki advises, but he is uncertain if he wants to.

And then someone lands on the wrecked rooftop.

Adrien recognizes some reflection of himself, or at least of Chat Noir within. Decked in the same icy shades as the rest of the landscape, the stranger(?) smiles at him.

“I wasn’t expecting  _ you,  _ I was expecting m-my princess to come.”

“You’re…me.” Princess. Marinette? Why would he be expecting Marinette? Marinette isn’t wrapped up in all this anymore, she’s  _ safe,  _ far far away from any Miraculous. “Or…?”

“Or something.” The mirror of himself gives a smile so garish it cannot be real. “Chat Blanc, at your service.” He rings the bell, and Adrien’s heart aches. The bell is something that’s  _ his  _ and only his.

“What happened?” Adrien softly whispers. What could drive himself to this madness? To the thought of destroying the world.

“They’re all dead. Anyone that could save me.” Blanc turns away, and Adrien leans to embrace him. “I do not want to die.”

“I don’t want you to die, either,” Adrien answers. “That would be…a sort of suicide, I think. Does it count if it’s an alternate version of yourself?”

“Just as much as me killing you would be,” Chat Blanc answers. “And I am very, very capable of that. But…I don’t want to.”

And then they separate from the embrace, and in holding hands Adrien remembers that he bears the earrings, not the ring.

“You…you swapped. You’re not the same Adrien.”

“We decided to keep the swap after the Reflekdoll incident for a bit,” Adrien answers, standing up and backing away, feeling something not quite cold come over him. “I know what it is like to hold destruction in my hand.”

“It is beautiful, isn’t it? We are the only ones that understand. Well — us and our lady, of course.” Adrien’s first thought is Kagami over Ladybug, and that is a betrayal, is it not? “But you possess in you a power just as beautiful.”

He thinks of the earrings, of Lucky Charm, of fate and creation and spontaneity. “It has its own charm.”

Chat Blanc smiles at the pun. “With our powers put together, I can fix everything. We can both live. And everyone else will, too.”

“Why are you so determined for me to live?” Adrien, in some flurry of instinct, caresses the other version of him’s face. “Why do you want me to remain alive?”

“There is some kind of bizarre longing inside of me.” Chat Blanc takes a deep breath. “I am…uncertain what it is. Coloring me in white is a  _ mockery  _ of what I am. I am far from pure. I am a  _ monster.” _

“You’re not a monster.” Because…they are each other, and if Chat Blanc is a monster what is Adrien?

He laughs in mockery of Adrien’s statement. “I have killed too many to be called anything else.”

“How long have you been alone?” Adrien asks. It’s some form of clarity, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“Too long,” Chat answers, leaning into Adrien. “I lost track days ago. I can’t even use the moon.”

When Adrien looks up, he knows why. The moon…the moon is broken in two split pieces, shrapnel orbiting the two just-barely off-sync halves. Not enough time has passed for them to fuse together again — Adrien thinks that if this universe remains as-is, Chat Blanc would die before the moon unified again. “You…”

“I’ve destroyed everything,” he says. “I need to fix it.” Chat Blanc caresses his face. “Adrien. Let me fix it. For us. For our princess. For love, and for everything to be okay.”

“It’s not enough.” Adrien turns away, standing up. “What sort of consequences will there be for it?”

“Screw the consequences.” Chat Blanc grabs Adrien’s wrist, and he turns back to face Chat Blanc. “I…”

Adrien loses himself for a second staring into Chat Blanc’s face, noting every little difference between them. There are so many; minute details that put Chat Blanc older than him by some time (about a year, Adrien guesses), and most of all the striking blue eyes. Those eyes are the only thing that has true  _ color —  _ they stand out, startlingly electric. Adrien can’t help his desire. But Chat Blanc blinks, and the moment is gone.

“I want her back,” he confesses. “I don’t care about anything else. I just want her back.”

“Tikki, spots on,” Adrien says, resolved to do something to save Chat Blanc. The magic swirls around him.

“Knowing something and seeing it are two entirely different things,” he breathes. “Adrien…”

“This isn’t right, is it?” Adrien asks, cupping Chat Blanc’s face. It feels a little more distant than it was before.

“What do you mean?”

“This.” Adrien leans in to steal a kiss.

He manages to lose himself for just a moment within it.

“You aren’t her,” Chat Blanc says. “You aren’t her, and you never will be.”

“I know,” he answers. “But I can be myself.”

“Or myself?” Chat Blanc replies wryly. “We’re…the same.”

“You want that back,” Adrien says. “I…”

He knows, in an instant, where the akuma is. “Lucky Charm,” he declares, but it’s nowhere near as triumphant as it probably should be.

“What are you doing, Adrien?” Chat Blanc asks. It’s the first time Chat Blanc really called  _ him  _ that, and Adrien feels strange at the notion of that. His own voice grates on his ears, and Adrien catches the eraser falling from the air.

“It’s time to make things right,” Adrien says.

Chat Blanc narrows his eyes, and holds out a version of Cataclysm. “Don’t you see it? Don’t you see that this is for the best? I have to live. And I have to get your Miraculous.”

“Fixing everything means that one of us  _ dies,”  _ Adrien stresses. “And…my way will be painless. Just a simple reset of everything to the present. And hopefully whatever triggered this darkness won’t happen.”

“And what about you?”

“I might be gone too. There still can’t be two versions of me.”

“Then we both die. My way…at least one of us lives.”

“There will always be an Adrien Agreste.” Adrien slips the eraser into his yo-yo. “There will  _ always  _ be someone that is one of us, the blonde son of Adrien Agreste mourning the loss of his mother, given a Miraculous to fight against Hawk Moth. That I believe in.”

Chat Blanc rests his forehead against Adrien’s. “Do you?”

Adrien rips the bell from Chat Blanc’s collar and throws it at the ground.

“Trust me,” Adrien says. “You won’t feel a thing.”

“I know,” he answers as Adrien frees the akuma and Chat Blanc reverts to Chat Noir.

It’s…still strange to know that Adrien  _ did  _ that.

He takes a deep breath, and walks into the Burrow.

“You need to stop Lady Noire,” Bunnyx says. “Come on, do it fast.”

“What?” he asks. “What’s going on, Bunnyx?”

“What’s that Lucky Charm you got? That’ll be useful for you.”

Adrien takes the eraser out from the yo-yo. “I don’t have much time.”

“I know,” Bunnyx answers. “Close your eyes.”

She puts one hand over his eyes and another on his shoulder, guiding him back to his timeline, presumably.

“Did you look at that gift you got?” Bunnyx asks.

“No, not really.”

“Then…don’t.” Bunnyx takes a deep breath. “That was the trigger point. If you make sure Lady Noire doesn’t sign it, then…”

“She didn’t.”

“Then it worked,” she says, with a smile. “Just like it should have.”

“Lady Noire!” he says, crashing through the portal. “Don’t sign that!”

“What?” she demands, pencil poised in her hand.

Adrien wordlessly passes her the eraser. “That’s…the trigger point. For something bad. Just…erase whatever signature you might have started, and everything will be okay.”

“Will casting the Cure erase you?” she asks.

“I will still exist,” he says. “Just not…well, I won’t remember any of what happened. You’ll need to ask Bunnyx for that.”

She nods, and erases the pencil from the box.

“Perfect,” he says. He feels like he’s about to start a loop that he’ll never progress from. But that’s…oh well.

She passes him back the eraser.

“Miraculous Mister Bug,” he whispers, and the magic ladybugs whisk him into the car and somehow he isn’t transformed.

Huh. Did he just…replace his previous self?

Well, that’s one way to keep the timeline from looping.

He dashes up to his room, and spots Lady Noire still inside.

“Oh, hey, Lady Noire,” he says, forcing awkwardness in order to avoid suspicion. After all, this is…technically breaking and entering, and he’s not supposed to know she’s here.

“Just wanted to, uh, deliver you a gift for your...name day? From your fanclub in Brazil?”

“Ohhhhh.” Adrien nods with understanding. He doesn’t really…want to dig further, not now that he knows the cost, and he almost suspects an akumatized Ladybug user might be  _ worse  _ than what he faced in the form of Chat Blanc. “Thanks, Lady Noire!”

“Happy name day!” she says, smiling before she leaves, vaulting off from the window.

He grabs the box and unwraps it.

A beret? In the same pattern as his shirt? Cool.

It’s certainly not the best work he’s ever seen, but it’s a labor of  _ love,  _ not meant for sale. The fact that someone  _ remembered  _ his fifth name day, yet alone cared enough to get a  _ gift delivered by Lady Noire… _

Well, Adrien  _ does  _ have reason to be happy.

(Even though the memory of Chat Blanc’s touch still lingers in his mind, living alongside the strange intimacy that they had during what…well, he couldn’t exactly call it a  _ battle.) _

(Even though that world of pure white will live in his mind forever.)

(Even though the shattered moon and those blue eyes will haunt his memory.)

He’s avoided that fate. And that’s a victory of its own.


End file.
